Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing.

When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.

Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.

I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.

A boy has to peddle his book.

Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that's one definition of a lady.

Champagne does have one regular drawback: swilled as a regular thing a certain sourness settles in the tummy, and the result is permanent bad breath. Really incurable.